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TWITTER UPDATE

August 2014

August 24, 2014

You can now watch the The Watchdog Morning Show on line every morning at Watchdognetwork.com and clicking the video button or our Ustream channel (Just search for "Watchdog Radio" and then follow that channel).

Just to give you some samples, here are a few clips. Starting with my rant on WV Dems who refuse to be Dems.

Of Course, it's not all political ranting on the show. Here Biff and I discuss the motorboarding WV doctor and a new phone app for parents.

August 23, 2014

I think it was CBS founder William S. Paley who once said "the thing Americans fear most is the moment of silence". Which may be why I--and suspect most of you--immediately turn on the TV when you come home or make sure the radio is playing in the car.

In a loud world, silence sells. Noise-canceling headphones retail for hundreds of dollars; the cost of some weeklong silent meditation courses can run into the thousands. Finland saw that it was possible to quite literally make something out of nothing.

In 2011, the Finnish Tourist Board released a series of photographs of lone figures in the wilderness, with the caption “Silence, Please.”

One researcher even suggests silence grows our brain.

Yet to her great surprise, Kirste found that two hours of silence per day prompted cell development in the hippocampus, the brain region related to the formation of memory, involving the senses. This was deeply puzzling: The total absence of input was having a more pronounced effect than any sort of input tested.

And it's probably no surprise to any of us that the cacophony of modern society does bad things to our body.

In the mid 20th century, epidemiologists discovered correlations between high blood pressure and chronic noise sources like highways and airports. Later research seemed to link noise to increased rates of sleep loss, heart disease, and tinnitus. (It’s this line of research that hatched the 1960s-era notion of “noise pollution,” a name that implicitly refashions transitory noises as toxic and long-lasting.)

The quotes are from Nautilus and the entire article is linked above. I recommend it for your reading.

I write this on a Saturday morning. In a silent house, with no TV or other noises.

August 18, 2014

Wheeling resident Chuck Wood this week announced as a formal write-in candidate for the congressional seat currently held by Dave McKinley.

Chcuk is saying many of this things I have been saying myself on issues like coal, corporatism, and economic diversification. But he has no money, no name recognition, no organization. Some would say he has no chance. McKinley's GOP war chest is big. Democrat Glann Gainer is likely to get support from the national Democratic party. So is Chuck a spoiler for any chance Gainer may have? A waste of a vote when it seems clear he can't win?

Or is it time to vote for candidates you agree with--not just the one you think can win?

One big question is whether the 2 "other" candidates should be on the debate platform or whether it should be just the 2 "major candidates" . Here's a somewhat satirical blog post about our conversation.

Sitting like kings top the West Virginia media landscape, West Virginia talk radio hosts Hoppy Kercheval and Howard Monroe this morning cut a deal on the upcoming debate between Senate candidates Republican Shelley Moore Capito and Democrat Natalie Tennant.

They came to an agreement this morning that if Buckley and Baber agreed to bow out of the October 7 debate between Tennant and Capito, then Kercheval and Monroe would each give them one hour on their respective radio shows for a “second tier” debate.

“We need to see the two key contenders side by side talking about the the matters that matter,” Monroe said. “Probably keeping it to those two (Capito and Tennant) makes the most sense.”

“I will spring for lunch to sweeten the deal,” Kercheval said.

Obviously neither Hoppy nor I set the rules for the debates, but the question is valid. If there is only an hour, should it be divided among 4 candidtes who are filed--or the 2 who are truly fighting it out?

August 17, 2014

Republican Dave McKinley is the favored incumbent in the race for West Virginia's First Congressional District seat. His well-known Democratic opponent is state auditor Glenn Gainer. But there is now another guy in the game as Wheeling resident Chuck Wood formally filed as a write in candidate.

Calling himself a "populist democrat", he feels that out-of-state corporate interests have dominated the state for too long, that the importance of coal is overstated by most elected officials, and the state needs to diversify its economy.

Wood has a background in science. An astronomer, geologist, former NASA employee, he thinks scientific reasoning may be a better way to approach many of our national problems than the political partisanship that dominates on Capital Hill today.